The New State

There should be in a democracy some sort of regular and ceaseless process by which ability of all sorts should come to the top, and flexibility in our forms so that new ability can always find its greatest point of usefulness, and so that service which is no longer useful can be replaced by that which is. In neighborhood groups where we have different alignments on different questions, there will be a tendency for those to lead at any particular moment who are most competent to lead in the particular matter in hand. Thus a mechanical leadership will give place to a vital leadership. Suppose the subject is sanitation. The man who is most interested, who has the clearest view of the need and who is its most insistent champion, will naturally step forth as the leader in that. The man who knows most about educational matters will lead in those, will be chosen eventually for the school committee or for the educational committee of the state legislature. Thus the different leaders of a democracy appear. Here in the neighborhood group leaders are born. Democracy is the breeding-ground of aristocracy. You have all the chance the world gives. In your neighborhood group show the clearness of your mind, the strength of your grip, your power to elicit and to guide cooperative action, and you emerge as the leader of men.

No adequate statement can be made in regard to leadership until it is studied in relation to group psychology. The leadership of the British Premier, of President Wilson, will become interesting studies when we have a better understanding of this subject. Meanwhile let us look briefly at some of the qualities of leadership.

The leader guides the group and is at the same time himself guided by the group, is always a part of the group. No one can truly lead except from within. One danger of conceiving the leader as outside is that then what ought to be group loyalty will become personal loyalty. When we have a leader within the group these two loyalties can merge.

The leader must have the instinct to trace every evil to its cause, but, equally valuable, he must be able to see the relative value of the cause to each one of his group⁠—in other words, to see the total relativity of the cause to the group. He must draw out all the varying needs of the neighborhood as related to the cause and reconcile them in the remedy. A baby is ill; is the milk perhaps too rich for babies? But probably the rest of the neighborhood demands rich milk. All the neighborhood needs in regard to milk must be elicited and reconciled in the remedy for the sick child. That is, the remedy cannot be thinner milk, but it may be a demand that the milkman have separate milk for babies.

In other words the leader of our neighborhood group must interpret our experience to us, must see all the different points of view which underlie our daily activities and also their connections, must adjust the varying and often conflicting needs, must lead the group to an understanding of its needs and to a unification of its purpose. He must give form to things vague, things latent, to mere tendencies. He must be able to lead us to wise decisions, not to impose his own wise decisions upon us. We need leaders, not masters or drivers.

The power of leadership is the power of integrating. This is the power which creates community. You can see it when two or three strangers or casual acquaintances are calling upon someone. With some hostesses you all talk across at one another as entirely separate individuals, pleasantly and friendlily, to be sure, but still across unbridged chasms; while other hostesses have the power of making you all feel for the moment related, as if you were one little community for the time being. This is a subtle as well as a valuable gift. It is one that leaders of men must possess. It is thus that the collective will is evolved from out the chaos of varied personality and complex circumstance.

The skilful leader then does not rely on personal force; he controls his group not by dominating but by expressing it. He stimulates what is best in us; he unifies and concentrates what we feel only gropingly and scatteringly, but he never gets away from the current of which we and he are both an integral part. He is a leader who gives form to the inchoate energy in every man. The person who influences me most is not he who does great deeds but he who makes me feel I can do great deeds. Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but few have made me want to do something. Who ever has struck fire out of me, aroused me to action which I should not otherwise have taken, he has been my leader. The community leader is he who can liberate the greatest amount of energy in his community.

Then the neighborhood leader must be a practical politician. He must be able to interpret a neighborhood not only to itself but to others. He must know not only the need of every charwoman but how politics can answer her call. He must know the great movements of the present and their meaning, and he must know how the smallest needs and the humblest powers of his neighborhood can be fitted into the progressive movements of our time. His duty is to shape politics continuously. As the satisfaction of one need, or the expression of one latent power, reveals many more, he must be always alert and ever ready to gather up the many threads into one strand of united endeavor. He is the patient watcher, the active spokesman, the sincere and ardent exponent of a community consciousness. His guiding, embracing and dominant thought is to make that community